Black video and wavy deinterlace following FL crash

[Robert Kennedy]

I know that interlaced sources are suspect, but I have determined the source of a number of errors I have been experiencing while using Cineform's 3D functionality. I tested this on a completely fresh installation of Win7 64-bit today.

If First Light crashes while in page-flipping 3D display mode, the green light on the nVidia 3D Vision emitter does not extinguish. When this happens, the following errors arise and persist even through reboots.

Issues include:

-Checking the "Render 3D intermediate" box in the export media dialogue will result in black video

-Choosing "Progressive" and checking the "Use maximum render quality" results in black video

-Choosing "Progressive" and NOT checking the "Use maximum render quality" results in weird waving artifacts

I have not determined a method for solving this issue aside from a clean windows install. Doing the "delete every trace of Cineform" offered by Cineform support does not fix this issue.

Has anybody else encountered this?

[Robert Kennedy]

I realized I had installed Stereoscopic Player around the times my black frame issues arose. I tried uninstalling that. For good measure, I uninstalled the 3D vision drivers and reinstalled them. After a reboot I retested and have the same issue.

I will be restoring to a fresh install of Win 7 and will hopefully nail this. Unfortunately, I have one interlaced project I just need to export before I can move fully over to a progressive workflow.

The wavy artifacts and black video do not seem to affect 2D projects.

I have been using new projects created from the Cineform templates each time, as well as new clips, so I don't believe the corruption is at the project level.

[Robert Kennedy]

This is a slight departure from my previous two posts about complete corruption of the 3D functionality due to FL crashing while in 3D display mode. This post shows some of the symptoms (but not the wavy deinterlacing). These have arisen even without FirstLight crashes while in 3D mode, so it appears.

Giving up for today, but thought I'd keep this little adventure updated.

While using 3D Vision glasses and emitter and a Quadro card with Neo4K 5.22b281 on a windows 7 64-bit fresh install, I have encountered the following funkiness when working with interlaced 3D footage.

Firstly, in order to be able to make 3D adjustments while PPro is open and actively displaying 3D, I do the following (as every other method of realtime 3D corrections during editing causes FLPlayer.exe to crash):
Load FL. Set internal window to Open GL 3D in view settings and display type to OpenGL 3D. Open a clip and confirm 3D page-flipping is active.

If I use FirstLight to make corrections to a clip that is open in PPro on a 3D timeline, it appears to corrupt the clip in such a way that:
1. Fast 3D must be checked for the display to work (i.e. not be black video) when paused on a PPro timeline. Without Fast 3D checked, the playback res must be set to 1/2 or else the image won't even appear during playback (yet still goes black whenever the playhead stops).
2. For renders, checking any of the boxes "Match Sequence settings" "Render 3D Intermediate" or "Use Maximum Render Quality" will result in an export of solely black frames
3. The corruption appears to be at the clip level as the symptoms persist through new project and sequences (from Cineform templates) and reboots. Clips which have not experienced this corruption are behave properly even in the same PPro Project/Sequence.
4. CFRTPlayback.prm will reliably crash PPro if 3D page-flipping is active, Fast 3D is unchecked and 3D media is placed on a timeline adjacent to a recently corrupted clip.

I don't have time at the moment to install Stereoscopic Player and see if it introduces wavy artifacts when exporting a single eye view from a 3D interlaced timeline and telling it to produce a progressive file (with "Use Max Render Quality" unchecked to prevent black video), but it is a moot point to me.

If I didn't have one already cut (and previously 3D corrected) last project to render out, I would be vetting my workflow in the progressive environment I intend to use instead of weirdo interlaced 3D land.

Now for the doosey: Reinstalling Windows and Cineform seems to completely wipe out any 3D corrections I have made. Is this right?

[David Newman]

You should not need to reinstall Windows. Seems like a display driver issue. You do not lose your corrections if you export the databases you want to save. Sounds like you should work with support as there is some crazy/weird stuff in these posts.

[Robert Kennedy]

Thanks, David.

I was doing a fresh reinstall due to licensing and activation issues (I think I confused the license system with all of the demoes) Since I bought a copy of Neo4K, I didn't mind starting with a clean slate. I anticipate problems exporting the database from my previous installation as it says trial expired on all 3 varieties of Neo (as I figured out which version I wanted to buy) and won't accept my accept my activation code for Neo4K. I will work with support to make this happen.

I do worry that the black video / wavy deinterlace issues I was experiencing on my previous install will follow onto the fresh install with the same active medadata database.

I feel these problems come from some error in quad-buffered openGL from firstlight, as that seems to he a requirement to get things to go funky.

Can any other users report their page-flipping / Quadro experiences?

Thanks,
Robert